Besides being crazy cool computer geniuses, Matt and Dave have one very important thing in common: those aren’t actually their names—at least in the Birchbox office. It’s become customary to refer to Matt and Dave strictly by their last names or as “lewis” and “mattk” to their fellow Tech team members.
Kimmel is the kind of person who we think should wear a wizard’s hat just so everyone knows what he’s capable of. Lewis wows us with his code review skills and voracious reading habits and, we’re told, he has the softest hair in the whole office. We can’t believe it’s taken us this long to introduce you to these two, but here they are at last!
Well hello, MattK.
Name/Title: Matt Kimmel, Senior Software Engineer
Hometown: Amherst, MA
Unofficial role: Programming Polyglot
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Birchbox Staffers’ New Year’s Resolutions
No matter how many times we break our New Year’s Resolutions, we can’t help but hope for the best as a new January approaches. 2012 was a big year, but as you’ll see in this video, Birchbox staffers have even bigger plans for 2013.
We’ll be kicking things off on the right foot with a whole slew of articles and videos designed to make 2013 your best year yet. Look out for those early next month, but in the mean time, tell us what you’re resolving to do this year! Just leave us a note in this video’s YouTube comments.
Help us achieve one of our New Year’s Resolutions by subscribing to our YouTube channel! There you’ll find exclusive videos, how-to tutorials, and tips for getting the most out of your beauty products.
Meet the newest spitfire addition to Team Content: Benedicta Cipolla. As our new Director of Editorial Operations, Bene is whipping our to-do lists into shape with her favorite organizational tool, Asana, and her hilarious tongue-in-cheek wit. She comes to us from the online style magazine Lifestyle Mirror and, before that, Howcast Media. Prior to moving to NYC, Bene spent years living in Rome, Italy, where she reported on Vatican news and wrote restaurant guides (how cool is that?). Read on to find out more about this multitalented pro.
Name/Title: Bene Cipolla/Director of Editorial Operations
Hometown: Fairfield, CT (though I’ve been in New York longer than any place else—11 years!)
Unofficial Role: Organizatron—never met a checklist I didn’t like.
Fun fact: My paternal grandfather had a barbershop in Providence. I like to think he’s watching over me at Birchbox when we’re working on men’s grooming stories.
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As someone who was born with pin-straight hair that refuses to hold a curl, I’ve harbored a deep, burning desire for princess waves for as long as I can remember. Needless to say, I had absolutely no idea how much time and effort is often required to make natural curls look as beautifully bouncy and glossy as they do.
When Curl Keeper by Curly Hair Solutions landed on my desk, I saw it as an excuse to launch a mini-investigation into the lives of the curly-haired gals that I envied. After hunting down a couple of Birchbox staffers with wavy locks, I handed them a sample of Curl Keeper to try for themselves. See what their thoughts were below!
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Hurricane Sandy may have wiped out power in all of lower Manhattan, including Birchbox HQ, but that doesn’t mean our staffers aren’t still hard at work. They’re just being a little…creative…about where they’re getting stuff done.
Our awesome (and stubborn) team has set up BBox “offices” all over the Tri-State area (take that, natural disaster!). Yesterday, as an afternoon pick-me-up, we started a ridiculously long email chain filled with photos of our new workday digs. From upstate New York to Brooklyn to uptown Manhattan, here’s a peek at our makeshift workspaces.
A cohort camping out at the Flatiron School. A closer look at the signs: “Flatiron School Birchbox Refugees” and “LIZ [our CTO]—we’re learning to code! (exclude Marie and Jer).”
From left to right: Melissa, Marie, Jenna, Jereme, Danielle, Caroline, Madelyne, and Katia (in front)
“Hi Team Birchbox! I am hanging with Norwegian babies in Bklyn!” —Hayley, Co-Founder
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With her always sunny disposition, her impressive knowledge of every aspect of the company, and her incredible ability to know the name and life story of every single Birchbox employee, Melissa is the ultimate people person—we can’t believe we ever did without her here! Though she’d been working remotely from Boston, we were so glad that we convinced her to come to New York six months ago so we could see her smiling face everyday. Read on to find out more about our favorite problem solver.
Name/Title: Melissa Enbar, People and Culture
Hometown: Mount Sinai, New York
Unofficial role: Director of Awesome
Fun fact: My dance troop won a dance competition when I was 12, and as a prize I performed on a big stage in the Epcot park at Disney World. The coolest part was practicing in the behind-the-scene studios!
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We’re always working to find the best new brands so we can share their amazing products with you—and our kickbutt brand partnerships team is hard at work sourcing those awesome lines everyday. Two of the team’s newest additions are Carlos and Logan, whose past experience with the coolest names in fashion, beauty, and food at Ogilvy & Mather and Weber Shandwick, respectively, means that you can expect lots of great things coming your way! When this savvy duo isn’t busy testing new products (see below) or hosting meetings, they’re erupting into spontaneous laughter and recapping last night’s shows on Bravo.
Name/Title: Carlos Alvarado, Brand Merchandising and Marketing Manager
Hometown: New London, CT
Unofficial role: Senior Director of Britney Spears Dance Parties
Fun fact: I celebrated my 21st birthday in both Rome and Amsterdam in one day.
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For the longest time, Jennie Pan has been toiling away at marketing analytics all by her lonesome in our offices. Finally, along came Kristin to ease her workload and now together, they form a two-woman wolf pack. This former Booz Allen strategy and change consultant is constantly creating fantastic analytics packages, but aside from number-crunching Kristin is also intensely creative, eschewing all TV-watching for landscape photography, needlepoint, and yoga. For more on this seriously cool Birchbox staffer, keep reading!
Name/Title: Kristin Eugenio, Brand Marketing Analyst
Hometown: Chicago, IL
Unofficial role: The Speed Talker
Fun fact: Are facts fun? If they are, my nicknames are DJ ICE, Euge and Kris. I once went camping for a month and didn’t shower the entire time. I make lists, have a photography blog, and am usually too honest. Oh! And I used to play competitive ice hockey and my team went to nationals. Lastly, I used to have a hippo beanie baby named Susan and made her bunk beds. Obviously she needed them.
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